Agua Verde Swell Statistics, Autumn: All Swell – Any Wind

The figure illustrates the combination of swells directed at Agua Verde over a normal northern hemisphere autumn and is based upon 8724 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Agua Verde. In this particular case the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles).

The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred 17% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs.

The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Agua Verde and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Agua Verde, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical northern hemisphere autumn, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Agua Verde run for about 83% of the time.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.